# Small Town Strategy
Websites and straight answers for small-town service businesses.
We rebuild your website, fix your Google Business Profile, and keep working on both for $500 a month with the build included. Plus a free 27-point checklist and plain-English marketing help for HVAC, plumbing, excavation and lawn care businesses in small-town America.
## Products
- HVAC Site Kit ($99): A complete heating and cooling company website. Edit one file, deploy free, own it forever. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/kits/hvac)
- Plumbing Site Kit ($99): A complete plumbing company website. Edit one file, deploy free, own it forever. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/kits/plumbing)
- Lawn Care Site Kit ($99): A complete lawn care company website. Edit one file, deploy free, own it forever. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/kits/lawn-care)
- Electrician Site Kit ($99): A complete electrical company website. Edit one file, deploy free, own it forever. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/kits/electrician)
- Roofing Site Kit ($99): A complete roofing company website. Edit one file, deploy free, own it forever. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/kits/roofing)
- Excavation Site Kit ($99): A complete excavation company website. Edit one file, deploy free, own it forever. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/kits/excavation)
- Site Kit license: one purchase covers one live website, the buyer's own or one client's. Perpetual, nothing expires, nothing to activate, no credit required. Freelancers may build a client site with a kit and transfer the code and the license to the client. Reselling or redistributing the kit itself is not permitted. An Agency License covering unlimited client sites exists in the terms but is not priced and not on sale. Full terms: https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/kits/license
- The service ($500 a month, 12 month minimum): we rebuild the website in Next.js, claim and complete the Google Business Profile, sort out the domain and DNS, and keep working on both every month. The page answers the question of whether a contractor needs a new website before local SEO will work, and the argument is that local SEO is normally sold as a retainer on a site you already have, so the business whose site is the problem gets a separate rebuild quote first and usually does nothing. Here the rebuild is the first month of the service, so there is nothing to pay up front. No advertising is run and no ranking is promised. Everything stays in accounts the client owns. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/local-seo)
- Small Town Strategy: Simple Marketing for People with Real Work to Do. A 73-page field guide for small-town service businesses by Andrew Hersh, published 2026-08-06. Paperback $14.99 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HDGNG6D9) and Kindle $6.99 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HDH5YQ46) on Amazon. Details: https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/book
## Free resources
- Free website check: paste a website address and get a live, plain-English list of what is costing the business phone calls. Reads the page as the server delivers it, before any JavaScript runs, which is roughly what a crawler or an AI assistant sees, and it says so on the results so a JavaScript-only element is read as a search problem rather than a customer problem. The result prints as a dated one or two page report the owner can keep, hand to whoever else decides, or save as a PDF, generated in the browser from what is already on screen so nothing is sent anywhere. No email required, nothing stored. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/check)
- Will optimizing your Google Business Profile do anything if your website is bad: answers a question the Google Business Profile guide corpus does not, because that corpus is scoped to the profile dashboard and the question lives on the other side of the website field. Argues that a listing gives a searcher three moves (call, directions, tap through to the site), that two of the three end where the profile cannot reach, and that a good listing on a bad site is therefore capped rather than wasted, so the right order is to fix the free half first. Includes an interactive 26-point self-audit: the owner answers for their own profile and the tool sorts the answers into fix this week, fix this month and polish, with what to do and why for each. Runs entirely in the browser, no email, nothing stored, it deliberately reads no profile data because that takes a paid data connection this business does not have, and it publishes no percentage for how much of a listing lands on the website because that figure would be an average of other businesses. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/google-business-profile-checklist)
- How much should a small town contractor spend on marketing: argues that the usual 5 to 10 percent of revenue rule is scale blind (a fixed small market has a ceiling that more spend cannot buy past) and builds the budget from the bottom instead: jobs needed, gross profit per job, and the share of that profit you will pay to win one. Includes a free calculator for cost per lead, cost per job won, and the most a lead can cost before the channel stops paying. Runs entirely in the browser, no email, nothing stored, and it deliberately publishes no average lead prices because every published figure is an average across trades and regions. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/cost-per-lead)
- The Small-Town Service Business Website Checklist, 27 points, no email required (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/checklist)
- Free sample of the book: the introduction and chapter one of Small Town Strategy: Simple Marketing for People with Real Work to Do, readable in full, no email required. Index: https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/book/read
  - Introduction: The winnable game: The opening of Small Town Strategy, free to read. Why a small-town service business is not competing with the internet, and why that makes the game winnable. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/book/read/introduction)
  - Chapter 1: The moment that matters: Chapter one of Small Town Strategy, free to read. Every dollar a local service business earns starts in one moment, and one test tells you whether a marketing idea reaches it. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/book/read/the-moment-that-matters)
## Guides
- How to Host Client Websites: Whose Account, Whose Bill, Whose Problem: The hosting question freelancers get wrong is not which host. It is whose account the site lives in, who pays the bill, and what happens to the client the day you stop answering the phone. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/how-to-host-client-websites)
- Website Maintenance Plans: What to Actually Include, and What to Charge For: Most monthly website plans sell nothing and clients eventually notice. What genuinely needs doing every month on a small business site, how to build three plans with real substance, and when not to sell one at all. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/website-maintenance-plans-for-clients)
- How to Get Web Design Clients in a Small Town: The advice written for city freelancers does not work in a county of thirty thousand people. What actually wins work in a small market, why the numbers are friendlier than they look, and what never to say to a local business owner. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/how-to-get-web-design-clients-in-a-small-town)
- What to Put on a Contractor Website (Page by Page): Most owners agonise over how the site looks and never decide what it should say. Here is the honest minimum: five pages, what each one has to do, and the words that belong on them. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/what-to-put-on-a-contractor-website)
- Should You Put Prices on Your Website?: The argument for and against, without the marketing certainty. Both sides are right about different businesses, and there is a middle option most trades never consider. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/should-i-put-prices-on-my-website)
- Photos for a Contractor Website: What to Use and What to Avoid: Stock photography quietly costs local businesses work. Here is what to photograph instead, how to shoot it on a phone, and the handful of rules that keep the pictures from slowing the site down. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/photos-for-a-contractor-website)
- Who Owns Your Website? How to Find Out in About Ten Minutes: Your website is four separate things, and four different people can own them. Here is how to check the domain, the DNS, the hosting and the files, what each answer means, and what to do if the answers are not you. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/who-owns-my-website)
- What Happens If You Stop Paying for Your Website?: What actually goes dark when each bill stops, in what order, how long you have to change your mind, and the one line item you should never let lapse even if you cancel everything else. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/what-happens-if-i-stop-paying-for-my-website)
- How to Switch Website Providers Without Going Dark: The order of operations for moving your website and email to a new provider, what breaks if you do it in the wrong order, how to keep the rankings you have, and the checks to run before and after the switch. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/how-to-switch-website-providers)
- Are Angi Leads Worth It? The Arithmetic to Run Before You Renew: A calm way to answer the lead-buying question for your own business, using your own numbers rather than anybody's opinion, and what the answer changes about where the rest of your marketing money should go. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/are-angi-leads-worth-it)
- How Much Do Contractor Leads Cost? Work It Out for Your Own Trade: Why there is no published price for a contractor lead that means anything, how to calculate what yours actually cost across every channel you use, and how bought leads compare with the ones your own listing and site produce. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/how-much-do-contractor-leads-cost)
- Lead Generation Sites vs Your Own Website: What You Are Actually Choosing Between: A structural comparison of renting demand from a lead marketplace and owning it through your own listing and site, including what each one does to the customer relationship, and the sequence that gets you from one to the other without a gap. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/lead-generation-sites-vs-your-own-website)
- How to Hand Off a Website to a Client Without Leaving Yourself on the Hook: The accounts, logins and documents that actually have to change hands at the end of a small business website project, and the handoff checklist that stops a launched site from becoming a lifetime support obligation. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/how-to-hand-off-a-website-to-a-client)
- Do I Need a Website If I Have a Google Business Profile?: An honest answer for a small service business, including what the free listing genuinely replaces, the three jobs it cannot do, and how to decide when a site is worth paying for. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/do-i-need-a-website-if-i-have-a-google-business-profile)
- Website Maintenance for a Small Business: What It Is, What It Should Cost, and What You Can Skip: A plain breakdown of what a monthly website maintenance fee actually covers, which parts a small service business genuinely needs, and why the build choice changes the bill more than the provider does. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/website-maintenance-for-small-business)
- What to Charge to Build a Website for a Small Business: A pricing method for freelancers and one-person shops who build sites for local trades. Why hourly billing loses money, three tiers that hold up, and how to quote without discounting. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/what-to-charge-to-build-a-small-business-website)
- Website Templates for Client Work: What to Check Before You Build On One: A checklist for freelancers and small agencies choosing a template to deliver client sites on. The licence question, the maintenance trap, and the parts that decide whether the site ever gets found. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/website-templates-for-client-work)
- A Next.js Website Template for a Local Business: What It Should Actually Include: What to look for in a Next.js template you plan to launch a real trade business on, from config-driven content to structured data, form delivery and the free hosting question. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/nextjs-website-template-for-local-business)
- How to Get More Plumbing Leads Without Buying Them: Lead services sell you the same call three times over. Here is how a small plumbing company builds its own lead flow, in the order the work actually pays off. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/how-to-get-more-plumbing-leads)
- How to Get More HVAC Leads in a Small Town: HVAC demand arrives in two spikes a year and disappears in between. Here is how a small heating and cooling company builds lead flow that survives the shoulder seasons. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/how-to-get-more-hvac-leads)
- Wix vs Owning Your Website: What You Are Actually Choosing: The real difference is not features or price. It is whether you can leave. Here is what renting a website costs a service business over time, and when renting is still the right call. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/wix-vs-owning-your-website)
- Do I Need a Website If I Have a Facebook Page?: An honest answer for a service business that gets most of its work from a town Facebook group, including the cases where the answer is genuinely no. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/do-i-need-a-website-if-i-have-facebook)
- How to Get Google Reviews Without Being Weird About It: A repeatable way for a service business to collect real reviews steadily, why the timing matters more than the wording, and what to do about the bad one. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/how-to-get-reviews-for-your-business)
- Service Area Pages That Actually Work (and the Kind Google Ignores): How to build pages for the towns you serve without producing the thin, copied doorway pages that get ignored or penalized. A pattern you can follow page by page. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/service-area-pages-for-contractors)
- Electrician Website Examples: What to Copy and What to Skip: Most electrician website roundups collect sites that photograph well. Here is how to find the electrical contractor sites that are actually winning work in your market, and what to take from them. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/electrician-website-examples)
- Roofing Website Examples: How to Tell a Working Site From a Pretty One: Roofing is the trade with the most website noise and the most homeowner suspicion. Here is how to find the roofing sites that are winning jobs in your market and what is worth copying. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/roofing-website-examples)
- Lawn Care Website Examples: What Works for a Seasonal Business: Lawn care sells recurring work in a short buying season, which changes what the website has to do. Here is how to read other lawn care sites and what is worth copying. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/lawn-care-website-examples)
- Excavation Website Examples: What an Earthwork Site Has to Prove: Excavation buyers are researching a large, slow, permit-heavy job. Here is how to read other excavating contractors' websites and what is actually worth copying. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/excavation-website-examples)
- Your Website Gets No Calls: Here Is How to Find Out Why: A service business website that produces nothing is usually failing at one of five specific points. Here is how to check each one yourself in under an hour, in order. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/website-not-getting-calls)
- Google Business Profile for Contractors: The Free Thing That Outperforms Your Website: For most local service businesses the profile drives more calls than the website does, and it costs nothing. Here is what to fill in, in what order, and what most contractors leave blank. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/google-business-profile-for-contractors)
- How to Show Up for "Near Me" Searches in a Small Town: Near me searches are decided mostly by proximity, categories and reviews, not by clever wording on your website. Here is what actually moves it, in the order worth doing. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/rank-for-near-me-searches)
- The Cheapest Way to Get a Real Website for a Service Business: Cheap has two meanings and they lead to opposite decisions. Here are the real options for a small service business, what each actually costs over five years, and where the traps are. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/cheapest-way-to-get-a-business-website)
- What to Look For in a Plumber Website Template: Most plumbing website templates are built to look good in a portfolio, not to make a homeowner with a burst pipe call you. Here is what actually matters. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/plumber-website-template)
- Choosing an HVAC Website Template That Books Calls: An HVAC website has to work on the hottest day of the year, on a phone, for someone whose air conditioning just quit. Here is what to check before you buy a template. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/hvac-website-template)
- What an Electrician Website Template Needs to Get Right: Electrical work is half emergency and half planned project. A template that only handles one of those leaves money on the table. Here is how to judge one. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/electrician-website-template)
- The Roofing Website Template Checklist: Roofing customers are deciding whether to trust you with the most expensive thing on their house. Here is what a roofing website template has to do to earn that. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/roofing-website-template)
- What a Lawn Care Website Template Should Do for You: Lawn care is a recurring revenue business, so the website's job is different from an emergency trade. Here is what to look for before buying a template. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/lawn-care-website-template)
- The Excavation Company Website Template Checklist: Excavation customers are contractors, builders and homeowners with permits and deadlines. A website template built for retail businesses will not serve them. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/excavation-website-template)
- HVAC Website Examples: What to Copy and What to Ignore: Looking at other HVAC websites for ideas is smart, as long as you know which parts are working and which are just decoration. Here is how to read them. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/hvac-website-examples)
- Plumbing Website Examples Worth Learning From: How to study other plumbing websites properly: which ones to look at, what to measure, and which popular features are quietly costing those companies calls. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/plumbing-website-examples)
- What a Small Business Website Actually Costs: The honest breakdown of the three ways to get a service business website, what each one really costs over five years, and which parts you cannot avoid paying for. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/small-business-website-cost)
- Website Builder, Template, or Agency: Which Is Right for a Contractor: A straight comparison of the three ways a contractor can get a website, including the tradeoff each one hides, and how to tell which one fits your situation. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/guides/website-builder-vs-template-for-contractors)
## Field Notes (marketing lessons for small-town service businesses)
- Marketing an HVAC Business in a Town That Only Thinks About You Twice a Year: Every HVAC marketing guide is written for a company with twenty trucks and a metro area to fill them. Here is the version for two trucks, a town of four thousand, and a phone that rings hard in July and January and barely at all in between. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/hvac-marketing-small-town)
- Getting More Plumbing Customers in a Town Where Everyone Already Has a Plumber: The plumbing marketing advice online is about buying leads and filling a funnel. In a town of four thousand there is no funnel. There are a few hundred households a year with a problem, and the question is only whether they think of you. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/plumbing-customers-small-town)
- Marketing an Excavation Business When Six People Decide Who Gets the Work: Search for excavation marketing and you get generic contractor advice. Search for rural marketing and you get advice for shops and restaurants. Nobody writes the one in the middle, which is what an excavation outfit in farm country actually needs. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/excavation-marketing-rural)
- Getting More Electrical Work in a Small Town Without Buying a Single Lead: Almost every article about getting electrical work is written by a lead seller. This is the version for a one or two van shop in a county where the same builders, realtors and neighbors keep handing out the same work. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/electrician-work-small-town)
- Where the Advertising Money Actually Goes in a Town of Four Thousand: Almost everything written about advertising in a small town is about attracting visitors to the town. This is the other job, ranked by how well each option pays for a business that already exists here. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/advertise-in-a-small-town)
- Marketing a Lawn and Landscaping Business Where Everyone Can See Your Work: Every guide to landscaping marketing is written for a company with a sales funnel and a service area of two million people. Here is the version for the outfit with three mowers and a town of four thousand. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/landscaping-marketing-small-town)
- In a Town This Size, the Same Customer Has to Come Back: The advice about winning repeat business assumes you can always find new customers. In a fixed population you cannot, which makes the second job from the same household the whole business rather than a bonus. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/repeat-customers-small-town-business)
- When the Regional Outfit Opens an Office in Your County: The advice about competing with big companies is written for retailers facing a national chain. This is the version for a three-truck service business when a hundred-truck company starts advertising in your town. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/compete-with-a-big-company-small-town)
- Word of Mouth Is a System, Not Luck: The four-part referral system behind every business that "gets all its work from word of mouth": the tellable detail, the ten-second ask, the easy handoff, and the thank-you. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/word-of-mouth-referral-system)
- The Ninety Seconds That Decide Who Gets the Job: How local customers actually pick a service business (memory, a trusted ask, a quick check, a call) and the one test every marketing dollar has to pass. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/how-customers-choose-local-business)
- Be the Business That Answers the Question: Phones and AI assistants now answer the questions neighbors used to ask over the fence. How to become the local business the machines cite instead of the one they skip. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/answer-customer-questions-online)
- How to Win the Town Facebook Group Without Being That Guy: The town Facebook group is a courtroom, not a billboard. The two rules for business owners, what actually earns recommendations, and the complaint reply to write before you need it. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/town-facebook-group-marketing)
- Signs, Trucks, and Shirts: The Advertising You Already Paid For: Your truck parks in front of your best prospects six times a day. The four things it has to say, why yard signs borrow trust, and the consistency rule that makes it all compound. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/trucks-signs-shirts-local-advertising)
- The Only Five Numbers Your Business Needs to Watch: Impressions and follower counts are scenery. The five gauges that tell a service business what to fix, and the one question that unmasks any marketing dashboard. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/five-numbers-service-business)
- The Friday Hour: A Marketing Routine That Actually Survives: One visible thing, one thank you, one look at the book. The sixty-minute weekly routine that keeps a service business's marketing alive through busy season. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/friday-marketing-hour)
- Growth in a Town That Isn't Getting Any Bigger: The town's population is fixed, so growth has to come from somewhere else. The four levers available to a service business that already exists, in the order they pay. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/how-to-grow-a-small-town-business)
- The Slow Week: Where a Contractor's Next Job Actually Comes From: What to do in the week the phone goes quiet, ranked by how fast it produces work. For contractors in small towns, where the lead-generation advice written for cities does not apply. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/more-work-as-a-contractor-small-town)
- Marketing a Business In a Small Town, Not Marketing the Small Town: Almost everything written about small town marketing is about attracting visitors to the town. This is the other job: getting the people who already live there to call you. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/market-a-service-business-small-town)
- Raising Prices in a Town Where You'll See Them at the Hardware Store: The generic advice about raising rates assumes an anonymous customer. In a small town you will run into them on Saturday. Here is how the increase is actually done. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/raise-prices-small-town-business)
- Hiring When There Are Only Four of Them and Everybody Knows Which Four: Recruiting advice is written for companies with an applicant pool. A small town service business has a known, finite list of capable people. That changes the whole method. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/hiring-small-town-service-business)
- Your Website Has One Job: The Five-Second Test: A contractor website is not an art gallery. The five-second test, the handful of elements that actually produce phone calls, and what to stop paying for. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/five-second-website-test)
- How to Get More Google Reviews Without Begging: The ten-second ask that fills a review page honestly, the reply habit that wins the readers, and the three lines you can never cross. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/get-more-google-reviews-without-begging)
- The Free Google Listing Worth More Than Your Website: Why your Google Business Profile matters more than your homepage, how the local pack actually ranks contractors, and the fifteen-minute checklist that keeps it working. (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/blog/google-business-profile-small-town)
## Links
Every page on the site, grouped and linked: https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/sitemap
Field Notes RSS feed: https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/rss.xml
Contact: andrew@padigitalstudio.com (https://www.smalltownstrategy.com/contact). One person reads it. There is no contact form and no phone queue.